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Meter maids are the honey badgers of Boston space saving

Interesting photo that shows what happens when a vengeful neighbor slashes your tires for daring to park in "their" space and then the local meter maid decides to issue you a steady stream of tickets. Brought to you by the neighborhood of East Boston.

That would require the cops caring, when they obviously don't. This dude's cousin Sully is probably a cop so he thinks he's invincible. Run your own sting and kick the guy in the face when he bends down to slash your tires.

The police do not have the time to do a stakeout on the rampant tire slasher, therefore according to you they must not care. First off reporting things to the police would be a starter, rather than say posting them online. Then maybe they would see this as worth their time since it is likely to occur again. Secondly, everyone who seems to love this space saver rule and wanted the mayor to keep it, well here is what you get. A shit load of vandalism reports and neighbors arguing.

I have reported plenty of stuff to the cops and they always act like they are doing me a huge favor just listening to me, or worse, they side with the people instigating violence and starting fights on the street (he was a Marine, so it was OK, Semper fi).

Does Boston ticket if you haven't moved your car in X number of days? I know Cambridge and Somerville do - a few days after a storm, they go around ticketing all the cars still covered with snow. But I haven't heard of Boston doing this.

Barring that - maybe the tickets are for being too close to an intersection? 2 hour parking?

In lousy weather, I've heard of meter maids writing bogus/questionable tickets because they don't want to do their jobs of finding actual violations, which would result in getting cold/wet. A lot of people will pay a bogus ticket because they can't be bothered to write an appeal or appear for a hearing.

Either way, ticketing a car that's been immobilized by a vandal sure is kicking someone when they're down.

Two summers ago I had a car I was donating that would not run. I put a huge sign in the window explaining the car would be there for about a week, it won't start and please don't ticket me while it was in a street cleaning zone in Brighton. A meter maid actually told me to do this. I put her first name on the big note. The next day I had a $40 ticket. I appealed it and I'm sure it gave all the dead souls at that office a hearty laugh. I had to pay the fine.

In Cambridge, the law says you have to move your car every 24 hours. But there's an exception if you have a resident sticker, in which case you never have to move your car until the next street cleaning day (or snow emergency, but only if you're on a major street). Of course, this only matters on the few streets that don't require permits or have time limits, or if you're using a visitor permit.

From what I heard, Boston doesn't have such a rule, or doesn't enforce it if they do.

There are certain streets in Southie, East / West Broadway (can't speak to other neighborhoods) that are 2 hour parking, even with a resident parking sticker, from 8-6 M-Sat. So it's possible he had a sticker but the street he was parked on has parking limits even with a sticker during weekdays / Saturdays.

72 Hour space-saving "privileges" after claiming a spot following a snow emergency as determined by the city - after 72 hours, send in the plows and tow any cars preventing the snow removal. I can only imagine that money generated from tow fees would either pay for the plows or encourage people to shovel out their cars and eliminate the need for saving spaces at all following a snow emergency. I'd also think that anyone attempting to save a space in a non-emergency would look like a dick and see their claim ignored. Just a thought from a 30-something Boston lifer who's embarrassed by the the overall parking madness here in town.

This has nothing to do with the person who had their tires slashed - that sucks, but really, after one ticket, you know it's gonna keep happening so work on moving the car instead of writing notes.

Some cities have multi-phase parking bans, that result in more plowing and clearing out spaces.

How it works - during the storm - no parking on the even side. After the storm and a grace period of a few hours to a day, no parking on the odd side. The voila, two cleared, perfectly usable sides of the street. No fighting over shoveled out spots, because the city cleared them all.

instead of "after 72 hours, send the plows", extend the street sweeping schedule to year round and send in the plows on the next regularly scheduled street sweeping date. If you suddenly made all street parking illegal 72 hours after a storm, there would be no place to put all the displaced cars.

Supposedly there's year-round street cleaning in NYC. I think that so far in February there's been about two days when ASP (alternate side parking) has been in effect. Since last week's storm it's been canceled because of the snow. Guarantee it's going to be next Tuesday before the city even thinks about it again.

Definitely, though, the city needs to enforce the no parking on the major arteries, get the cars off those roads, and plow those streets to the curb. I remember one of the big storms in the early aughts where cars where snowed in, then iced in, for most of the winter. Good luck digging that out.

Louisburg Square is duplicitly maintained by the city in many circumstances and yet is somehow still "private property". John A. Keith did some research into how the ownership has changed hands over the years to benefit the politically connected when suited. Somehow the ownership isn't paying property taxes on the whole thing either out of some archaic agreement. One of the last Olde Boston bastions of Yankee snobbery and corruption.

This sucks. I'm not sure what BPD can do about this. It would be interesting to have a couple of neighbors rat the guy out to police. Someone knows who was saving that space. $5,000 reward gets the guy's name in three...two...one.

When I lived in JP, it seemed like our street was a great place to dump an abandoned car. One winter a rather large Buick was parked in front of our house for about six weeks. The car was in decent condition and had valid plates, so at first I thought it was just a new car in the neighborhood. Maybe the person hadn't wanted to drive it much in the winter. Whatever. Eventually I looked closely at the windshield. There was a phone number call if you had "concerns" about the car. So...I called. Explained who I was and why I was calling. The young woman who answered lived in the Fenway, and told me that was her car and that it had broken down.

Okay, but, um, a tow-truck? "Oh, I don't have any money, blah, blah, blah. The car won't move, blah, blah, blah." Me, "You don't even live in the neighborhood, and you've been taking up a space on our street for at least six weeks. Get the car off our street by the end of the week, or I'm calling the city to report an abandoned vehicle."

I'd say so. There was one less space on the street when this car was there, so, yes, since the street was already full, it left one less space for an actual neighbor, or person visiting someone on the street, to park.

I report cars as abandoned in JP all the time. The city comes and puts a notice on the car with a number to call if it isn't abandoned, and about two weeks later if they haven't heard from the owner they remove the car. I have had a couple of cars removed from my street this way.

Even if the owner doesn't drive the car, all they need to do is call the number and the city won't tow it, so next time just report the car as abandoned.

When I lived in Medford, a poorly parked Ford Taurus/Mercury looking thing turned up at the start of winter and spent the entire winter there. Medford periodically does really poorly planned all-day street cleaning marathons, where entire neighborhoods are posted on both sides of the street. I figured it'd get towed then so I didn't say anything. Sure enough, sweep-ma-geddon comes and goes and the Taurus is still there. I call the Medford Police one day, and the car was gone with an hour.